


Of Love And Saviors

by Marzi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 19:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3948313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzi/pseuds/Marzi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle travels to New York to give Neal his old shawl on behalf of his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Love And Saviors

**Author's Note:**

> I recently decided to catch back up with the show which made me go through my fic folder and poke around things. I found this, and realized I am never going to write the full version, so I decided to fix it into a wee little one shot and post it.

Neal ignored the knocking. He hadn't buzzed anyone in, and whoever was in the hall would realize soon enough they were at the wrong door. Except they kept knocking.

 

He couldn't keep his eyes from straying to the window, the fire escape, before he went to the door. He had been in New York quite some time, managed to even inhabit just one apartment for nearly a year, but he always had his eye on an exit. It was a hard habit to break, the lesson long learned and far more ruthless than any pain he might create leaving behind things in his flight. But now it was just someone knocking at his door, and more than likely, they simply hadn't realized they had the wrong apartment.

 

The peephole showed him only one person in the hall, so he opened the door. The window was open behind him. If someone came from the side, he had a good chance of slipping away.

 

The woman smiled up at him, bright, kind blue eyes, and a face framed with dark curls. She had a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, the tattered and faded quality of it stood about against the vibrant blue wool of her coat. She was young, but tiny crows feet appeared at the corner of her eyes when she smiled.

 

“Neal Cassidy?”

 

He almost slammed the door in her face. The window was open behind him. “Who's asking?”

 

Bare fingers emerged from her pockets as she lifted her hands to take the shawl from her shoulders. “I'm here to give this back to you.”

 

Neal edged back, already half closing the door. He hadn't dropped that tattered shawl anywhere, he didn't own it, and hadn't seen it before. She didn't seem to notice his sudden flightiness, simply held out the small bundled cloth towards him. When he didn't take it she draped it on the doorknob.

 

“I know your father wouldn't want you to be cold.”

 

His nails scraped against the wood of the door frame as his hand clenched. She turned and walked back down the hall.

 

The way Neal saw it, he had two options, go back through the apartment and out the fire escape, or go down the hall after her.

 

-

 

When the wind changed and the clouds rolled in, he closed the window. She was on his couch and the weather hadn't seemed to bother her, but the sound of the rustling trees outside had started to get to him. They had nearly drowned out the sound of cars and people and the city, and had started to remind him of home.

 

Neal wasn't really sure he could be reminded of home right then. Not when what he was being told painted such a new picture of the place. Of his father.

 

“I'm just.. I can't think of why he wouldn't be the one here. Why he wouldn't survive to see this through.” A dark, and terrible curse. Was everyone from home really here?

 

“He might have been. A part of him certainly hoped to be, for a long time.”

 

“What happened?”

 

“I asked something of him, before the curse was enacted.”

 

She paused, and though Neal was sure she would continue with the story, he pushed forward into the silence. “What did you ask for?”

 

“A kiss.”

 

“A-?” The impossible thought- that his father had never forgotten, had been searching for him all the time- was briefly displaced by another. “He loved you.”

 

“And I loved him.”

 

“Then why.. if there was a chance he could survive it, cursed as he was, why would you take it away?”

 

“He needed to be brave, and he had to trust me. He also had to believe in himself.”

 

“What?”

 

“He had to believe he was still capable of love. He had to know that, and he had to know he was loved.”

 

“Even if it killed him?”

 

“Yes.”

 

-

 

Going back with her didn't feel right so much as inevitable.

 

Belle laughed when he told her his story, that he knew Emma. It did not seem to be a sound she made often. He tried to imagine his father making her laugh. His mind conjured trilling, impish, giggles, and the hairs on the back of his neck raised. Those were not sounds he ever wanted to hear again. He ever would hear again. His Papa, dead.

 

After all this time, it was somehow surprising.

 

“August made me leave, said I was hurting her.”

 

Her laughter had stopped after she had assured him she was only amused by his knowing the Savior, but a lightness had clung to her eyes. Saying that made it dim.

 

“You love her.”

 

_Loved,_ he wanted to correct her, but his tongue would not comply.

 

“And you abandoned her.”

 

That made him grip the wheel of the car tighter. His chest ached. “I was trying-”

 

“You were not protecting her.”

 

Coming from the woman who had somehow managed to love his father, Neal knew it would only be polite to listen.

 

“Your father used his love for you to hurt others. I can understand why that made you think distance would be better.”

 

His father's love had been a fierce weapon he had used against all others around them. Or at least, as a justification for the attacks he executed. Somehow the love he had for the woman in the car with him had been turned on himself.

 

This woman had  _killed his father_ because of love. Maybe listening to her wasn't such a good idea.

 

“That doesn't mean you would have used your love to hurt her.”

 

“But I did.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Just like his Papa. Not a comparison he wanted.

 

Belle fiddled with her seat-belt, worrying her lip. Neal's stomach twisted. What was she holding back? She looked away from the road, towards him.

 

“She has a son.”

 

-

 

He stopped outside the town line. Belle didn't seem surprised. Emma's story wasn't hers to tell, but there were so many questions he wanted to ask. He had kept himself limited only to directions during the rest of their drive.

 

A son. Henry.  _His_ , hung unconfirmed, unspoken in the air between them. She had no other reason to bring it up.

 

“Do they know?” He looked into the rear-view mirror, seeing the shawl folded up on his backseat. Neal hadn't packed anything to take with him from New York except for that. “What... what he did?”

 

What she did, more accurately, but he wasn't sure he wanted to draw attention to that. She had taken his father's heart, the heart of the one she had loved most, and cast it into a fire in order to create a curse. It had been at the now dead man's request, but that did not seem to make things simpler.

 

“They don't know, they don't even remember who they are.”

 

Right. Cursed. “But she's there.”  _Here_ was almost the more accurate word, considering how close to the town he was.

 

“Yes. The Savior.”

 

She seemed to find the title funny.

 

Neal wasn't sure what to make of Belle. Was she a monster? A savior herself? She had defeated the Dark One, after all. So many had tried and failed. It seemed to have taken its toll on her. She could still smile, and laugh, and when she listened it was with an empathetic ear, but there was something about her. Something off. Like she had been assembled with not all the right parts, a jerry-rigged sense of happiness, an incomplete reason for living.

 

Emma's presence in town might have woken her memories, but she seemed in need of a savior as much as the still ignorant townsfolk.

 

Neal stopped idling and moved the car forward, across the town line.

 

Maybe he needed one too.


End file.
